Sunday, May 29, 2011

LEFT INSIDE: Old Corner Book Store Ad

An advertisement for a long gone Boston institution and apparently one of the best bookstores on the East Coast. The post card advertisement is dated April 1960 (lower corner in first photo). Like everything in Boston the building itself is loaded with history.

It was home to the retail space for historically important Ticknor & Fields, publisher of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emerson, Thoreau, Twain and nearly every literary giant of the 19th century. In 1864 the building was sold to E.P. Dutton. Later it would be home to Henry Houghton who would merge his own printing outfit, The Riverside Press, with Ticknor & Fields to form the powerhouse publishing company of Houghton & Mifflin. The bookstore tenants left the building several decades ago, but the building continues to be referred to as The Old Corner Bookstore. Photos of the building as it looks today can be found here.

I like the logo in the upper corner of the first photo with the omnipresent patriotic symbol of the eagle with the encircling words that read: "For a Better Read / Better Informed America. Wake up and Read." Amen to that.

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The Culprit

I am a part time writer and bookseller. Back in 1999 I started an internet bookselling business from which this blog gets its name. It is solely devoted to the sale of out-of-print & vintage crime, supernatural, adventure and other genre fiction. I have also written critical essays and reviews on detective & supernatural fiction for fanzines, internet sites and small press publishers.